[Windows 7] Black screen after POSTing for the first time

[SiD the Turtle]

Hi guys,

This problem has been bothering me for months and I'm no closer to a solution.

I have an old P4 machine that was running Windows XP. I've installed Windows 7 on it, the install goes fine and then the machine reboots itself as normal. After it's finished posting it should go to the screen with the four coloured balls circling around to make the Windows logo, but the screen just goes black. It still has a signal, it's not as if the video cuts out. There's no disk activity and I've left it running for hours with no luck. I cannot get it to brining up the boot menu and reinstalling does nothing.

Any ideas?

 

[Mint_Sauce]

Few things you could try:

Make sure the motherboard has the latest BIOS
Remove anything from the mobo that's not required (sound card etc)
Remove all USB devices before booting
Make sure RAM voltage is correctly set (shouldn't be an issue but might as well if you're clutching at straws).

Can't think of anything else, hope one of them helps.

 

[Souljacker]

I had a similar issue. For some reason, there was an incompatibility issue with my graphics card and new motherboard.

Both products are fine, they just won't work together under Win 7. Unfortunately I couldn't find a solution and bought a new graphics card!

Very strange.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

I found the problem, though I have no idea why it's a problem. Basically I did a BIOS reset and that fixed it (don't know why I didn't do that before), so I went through every setting until it broke:

Basically disabling the IDE controller stops W7 starting, though the machine has no IDE drives as the disks are SATA.

Go figure.